Top 10 Appointment Setting Services to Consider

Setting up appointments with qualified prospects is essential for any company looking to grow its customer base and increase sales. 

However, not all appointment setting service companies are created equal. To help you navigate the crowded field of appointment setting services, we’ve compiled a comprehensive comparison post on some of the top companies in the industry. 

In this blog post, we’ll take a close look at the key qualities that make an excellent appointment setting company and evaluate how each of these companies measures up. 

Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketing executive at a large corporation, this guide will help you make an informed decision about which service company is right for your needs.

What exactly is the appointment setting service? 

The appointment setting service is a process of scheduling meetings with qualified leads for your sales team. 

They mostly happen in the B2B industry and are one of the least expensive ways companies generate qualified leads. They can be done through email marketing, social media, telephones, or other forms of communication.

Since many business owners don’t want to waste their time and resources on people who have no interest in their products or services, they rely on appointment-setting services to generate qualified leads.  

Most appointment-setting services have trained sales representatives that plan these appointments and further continue the relationship with the prospects to move them through the lead cycle. 

Since they are knowledgeable about the products or services, they can provide customers with more detailed information, answer their questions, draw up contracts, make a sale, and conduct follow up. 

Top 10 appointment setting services you need to consider

Check out these ten best appointment-setting services you can consider for your business.

1 – Nerdy Joe

Are you tired of wasting time and resources on ineffective appointment setting strategies? Are you tired of spending countless hours on cold outreach and not getting the results you want?

We feel you. That’s why we set out to be your go-to appointment setting service. We primarily offer lead generation services. Our team of lead generation specialists use cold email to reach out to prospects and book meetings for our customers. 

We operate like an in-house team of appointment setters for sales teams. We use a unique process where we manually research prospects, build lists manually, and personalize every single cold email we send — we don’t send out generic emails to a massive list. 

Every copy we produce for you will be tailored to the needs and interests of each prospect, increasing the chances of them responding positively. 

We’re result-driven and care about your ROI. We report on metrics that matter, like the number of meetings booked, and not vanity metrics, so you can be sure that our efforts are translating into tangible results for your business. 

Also, we’re committed to providing exceptional service without any strings attached. We won’t make you sign any retainer contract, and you’re free to stop the subscription based on satisfaction.

Plus, with our transparent reporting, you’ll always know exactly what you’re getting for your money. We’re confident that we’re one of the best appointment setting companies, but don’t take our word for it.

Let’s discuss why Nerdy Joe is the best company you need to consider for your appointment setting needs. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best choice for appointment setting service and lead generation company for your business

Result-driven and ROI-focused appointment setting service: Pay for the meetings booked, not for the workflow or the number of emails sent.

We understand that your primary goal or need when you’re looking for an appointment setting service is that you want to book more meetings with potential clients or prospects interested in your business in order to generate more business. 

Because of this, your main interest when working with an appointment setting service is to get more meetings or appointments booked and eventually turn the prospects into customers for your business. That means that only the number of meetings booked actually ties to your ROI. 

Now, here is where most appointment setting services fail you. In general, the appointment setting service you decide to work with will fall into one of the four following categories:

• Services that charge you for the campaign they run or the workflow they perform, and not for the number of meetings they book for you.
• Agencies that promise you incredible results but fall short of delivering what they had promised you. 
• Services that make you sign long-term retainer agreements where you pay them on a monthly basis even when you’re not satisfied with what they do and don’t get results. 
• Agencies, like us that only charge you for the number of meetings they book for you, not for the campaign they run or the workflow they put in. They present you with a proven, surefire process for generating leads and booking meetings for you, they book the meetings, and you pay them exactly for that. 

You can tell that only the fourth type is the right appointment setting service for you. It genuinely cares about your ROI and strives to bring tangible results that you can measure against your ROI — and that’s where we stand. 

We believe if you are looking for an appointment setting service company, you’re most certainly not getting the number of meetings you want or that you are seeking to grow it, and so we position our service to deliver exactly that. 

Our appointment setting experts understand this, and that is why when you decide to work with us, our primary goal is to bring actual meetings to your table. The work we do or the number of cold emails we send do not concern you. (Don’t worry, we don’t spam people). 

As well, we won’t bother you with vanity metrics such as email opens and clicks. Instead, we will only report to you with metrics that matter to your goals. Here are some of the metrics we report on our appointment setting service clients. 

• The number of meetings booked.
• The number of positive replies.
• The number of interested prospects wanting to learn more. 

Excellent cold email campaigns aligned with your brand and target audience

“We’ll send 1000 cold emails per day for every weekday and before the weekend, we will get 20 replies before the end of the week and book you four meetings with qualified prospects you can easily”

Have you ever heard that? If not, then chances are you haven’t been following cold email and appointment setting service gurus on Twitter. 

The problem we’re pointing to is that most companies or the average appointment setter go about it the wrong way. They believe setting appointments is a number game. Their thinking is that the more people you reach out to with your cold email, the more people you can book. 

Granted, it does sound like some logical thinking to some extent and could even work. But no, we don’t do it. And here is why you shouldn’t hire an appointment setter who does this. 

• Poor and mediocre service: If you are sending a thousand cold emails a day, it means that you are taking the time to research your prospects to tailor your email to them. You’re blasting people with generic cold emails and pushing for action. They’ll know you’re selfish and lazy — and they’ll hate you for it. 
• Getting flagged as a spammer: If you are sending that many cold emails daily, ESPs and ISPs will flag your email and IP addresses as spammers, which you are indeed.  
• Damaging both brand and sender reputation: Appointment setter who does this will kill your company’s reputation, and you’ll get a bad rap on social media. Also, we are sure that’s not how you want your business to be represented.
• Poor leads quality: The quality of the leads they book the meetings with will be subpar, and you can’t convert, at least not easily or in a short timeframe. 
• Pissed prospects: Some prospects can be mean to you, saying things like “Remove me from your list”, “Don’t ever email me again,” or worse, “Really? Your cold email sucks”. 
• Deliverability issues: Your domain will face severe deliverability issues, and most of your future emails, if not landing in the spam folder, will be bouncing.

That aside, our team doesn’t want to send a thousand cold emails per day to only book you four meetings. It rubs against our ethics as a group of marketers with high-quality work standards. 

Our ideal scenario as an appointment setting service is to send 20 super personalized cold emails, get 10 positive impressions and replies, and book you five meetings with well-educated prospects who are genuinely interested in what you do. Think of it like account-based marketing.  

So, instead of sending random, template-based cold emails to thousands of people, we take an approach in which we are super-specific in who we target and create customized cold emails that are personalized and tailored to their specific needs and unique individuals. 

Our goal is to make each person we reach out to feel you know them, get them to take you seriously, and not just another spammer in their inbox. Stellar copywriting skills and personalization are how we achieve this. 

We take it slow, put in the research to find what your target audience cares about, and our cold email copies are always optimized for maximum impact. How do we research people? 

We listen to podcasts they’ve been on, read blog posts they wrote, check their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts, and read discussions on forums they’re in.

Using the data we collect, we craft customized first lines, icebreakers, and cold emails tailored to each individual. 

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

Here’s what he replied 1 hour later.

But to achieve this, it requires a meticulous process where we research prospects and build lists manually — and we enjoy it. 

Manual prospect research: we target a very short list and build a list and do all the research ourselves.

We told you how we research prospects for your appointment setting needs in the upper section. But before that, you and us have to agree on who to target. And here is how that happens and why our way is the best option for you. 

First thing, we are talking about research prospects and building lists manually. There are tools for that (ZoomInfo, Lusha, LeadsEngine, Clearbit, etc.), and you might wonder why we don’t use those tools to speed up the process.

The issue with data intelligence tools is that the data they give you is basic, and in most cases, one can guess them. For example, using these tools, it’s easy to find data regarding companies that: 

• Are in the healthcare industry, 
• Have 50 to 100 employees,
• Have recently made an IPO,
• Are in Canada,
• Use Trello or Monday.com as part of their tech stack.

That’s generic data; it says nothing about the target company or its pain points. Even more, it does not tell us anything about the accounts we will target, and we can’t use the data to properly create cold emails that compel people to react and book appointments with you. 

So, we don’t use those, and here is what we do instead. 

First, we will want to discuss your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Most people only have a surface-level understanding of the target audience, and that does not help. Here are the answers we get in general when we ask people about their ICP. 

• Our ICPs are tech companies.
• Our ICPs are eCommerce companies based in the U.S.
• Our ICP is a DevOpp that uses GitHub.

That’s not specific enough. We want to set you up with people who are actually interested in what you offer or have needs your solution will solve — literally. And so, we ask you questions that help us know precisely who we should target and why. 

Here are some of the questions we ask our clients about the people we should target for them. 

• Which type of clients have the highest lifetime value?
• Which type of clients is easiest to close?
• Which type of clients churns the fastest?
• What are the top 3 objections you hear from prospective clients during sales calls?
• Why did you start your company? 
• What pain points were you trying to solve?
• Etc.

Once you answer these questions, we can pinpoint precisely who we should target and why. And this type of information makes the difference between: 

“We’re targeting series A tech companies,” 

And 

“Our ICP is a VP of Sales at a b2b Healthcare company in Estonia selling to HR professionals, and his main pain points are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often refers to XYZ podcasts to get insights as to how to manage his team efficiently.” 

Once we have a clear understanding of who the ICP is, we proceed to manually build our list, and that’s what we use to run the cold email campaigns and book you the meetings with prospects that you can actually turn into customers.

No contract, No retainer, No strings attached: We are a pay-per-performance appointment setting service. 

We understand exactly what you need, and that’s why we offer a unique appointment setting service that eliminates the need for long-term, binding contracts.

We don’t believe in locking you into a rigid payment plan. Instead, we offer flexible options that allow you to choose the plan that works best for you, pay only for the meetings we book for you, and renew only if you’re satisfied with the results.

Our approach is designed to give you the freedom to choose what’s best for your business. Whether you need to scale up or scale down, our pay-per-performance model allows you to do so without any financial or legal consequences.

With our flexible approach, you’re always in control. It also commits us to deliver results that exceed your expectations and maintains a high level of customer satisfaction.

Pricing

Our appointment setting service’s pricing is crystal clear. 

We have three plans for qualified appointment setting:

• Silver: It costs $499/month and only gives you one warm LEAD.
• Gold: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $999/month and gives you 6 hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.
• Platinum: This plan is for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 15 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

Our email marketing pricing includes the following:

• The tech stack we use to build your prospect list and send and monitor your campaign.
• A complete list of prospects that fit your buyer persona and ICP.
• The campaign setup fees.

2 – CallBox

Callbox is a B2B lead generation agency that offers appointment-setting services to increase qualified sales appointments through B2B lead generation and telemarketing services. They have worked with various notable companies such as DHL, Fujitsu, HP, Forbes, Acer, Infor, and more.

Their in-house campaign management platform, Pipeline, collaborates with the renowned marketing software HubSpot to implement multi-channel marketing strategies that enable you to engage more with your target prospects. Some of these multi-marketing strategies include phone calls, emails, chats, websites, events, and more. 

After combing through their list from their global database, they run targeted call and email campaigns that enable you to connect and engage with your target prospects, generate more qualified sales opportunities, and boost conversion rates. Some other benefits you can enjoy include:

• Access to recent calls or appointments across mobile browser
• Nurture leads by defining the next move for their sales prospects
• Send and receive timely alerts which enable you to respond to any action taken by prospects
• Track and measure the lead generation campaign performance. 

There is no pricing detail about their sales development service on their website, but you can contact them to request a quote. 

3 – Cience

Cience is a B2B lead generation agency that provides lead generation and appointment-setting services for various companies in 195+ industries. They offer these services in the form of inbound and outbound sales development, where they build pipelines with qualified meetings. 

Their approach enables them to use sophisticated software and craft targeted multi-channel campaigns that bring qualified appointments to your company. They understand that sales development is hard and, as such, craft the perfect message that can fit the right prospect at the right time. 

Cience offers their pricing plan based on contracts and requires you to pay a minimum of three months upfront fee to enjoy their service.

4 – Leadium

Leadium is a B2B lead generation that offers appointment-setting services to various companies seeking to create more qualified sales opportunities. They have worked with various companies such as Comparably, Bright Wolf, Nymi, Freshworks, SharpSpring, PaySafe, and more.

To deliver a full-service appointment-setting program, they strategically focus on engaging the prospects at each stage of the sales funnel and implement various outbound sales strategies. They reach more people at the right time by engaging with them on their preferred channels such as email, LinkedIn social selling, cold calling, or sms mail. 

They also utilize various data and sales tools to build their clients’ sales pipelines. Some of these tools include Crunchbase, SimilarWeb, DialPad, ZoomInfo, SemRush, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and more.

There are no pricing details about their appointment-setting service, but you can fill out the form on their website to request a quote. 

5 – Martal Group

Martal Group is a lead generation agency that specializes in the B2B tech industry. They provide appointment-setting services and generate qualified meetings to grow businesses. They have worked with various companies such as Jedox, Denodo, FullScreen, Zurich Connect, OurCrowd, and more.

They provide a team of skilled SDRs that are efficient in sourcing qualified leads through inbound and outbound lead strategies, driving new client registration, and booking appointments. 

To do this, they track down key decision-makers that fit your ICP through personalized lead-generation strategies such as discovery calls, emails, and more. Then, they qualify the prospects and set up meetings for them.

Martial Group offers a contract-based pricing plan and requires you to pay for a three-month pilot campaign to enjoy its service. 

6 – Remote CoWorker

Remote CoWorker is a hiring platform where you hire virtual professionals to grow your businesses. With the right assistant, you can streamline your sales and billing processes to help you drive more revenue. 

Remote CoWorker offers three pricing plans for their services which include:

• Full-Starter plan which costs $7.99 per hour
• Part-time starter plan which costs $8.99 per hour
• Full-time bilingual plan which costs $9.99 per hour

7 – Cural

Cural is an outsourced SDR agency that provides appointment-setting services for various customers. They implement an omnichannel outreach strategy to generate qualified leads to scale businesses and drive growth. To set up qualified meetings, they implement a series of processes which include:

• They build a highly relevant data set based on ICP and buyer persona
• They operate behind social profiles to identify prospects
• They reach out to these prospects through social channels, either through emails or video pitches

After going through this process, their SDR team reaches these prospects proactively through phone calls and qualifying them for appointments. There is no pricing detail about their service on their website, but you can contact them to get a quote. 

8 – OutboundView

Outbound View is a sales intelligence and appointment-setting service for companies that target HR. They have worked with various companies such as HelloTeam, RallyBright, BetterUp, PSI, GP Strategies, and more. 

They focus on finding lists of HR buyers and setting qualified appointments for companies that find it challenging to generate qualified sales opportunities. Although there is no pricing detail on their website, you can fill out the forms on their website to request a quote and get further information. 

9 – Prialto

Prialto is a managed virtual assistant service that helps to offload admin work and improve productivity. With over 13 years of experience, they serve businesses of all sizes, whether individuals, teams, or organizations. They have worked for companies such as Headline, Rapid, Graham company, Compass, and more. 

They offer a virtual sales assistant service that helps to improve call rates, leverage CRM pipeline insights, and maximize sales productivity. They do this by analyzing your database of prospects to find the ones that fit your ICP, reaching your prospects through email campaigns and phone calls, and setting up your calendar to fill in meeting opportunities. 

They utilize tons of technologies such as Salesforce, Mail Tester, Expensify, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. After engaging with your audience, they conduct follow-ups to re-engage the prospects in the sales process and keep track of all conversations. 

Prialto offers three pricing packages, and this includes:

• Individual plan, which costs $1350 per month
• Team plan, which costs $4050 per month
• Organization plan, which requires you to contact them for pricing.

10 – Upcall

Upcall is a lead generation service that generates outbound B2B qualified leads to grow businesses. They are trusted by over 400 companies, including AirBnb, Farmers Insurance, BuildZoom, LG, Ritual, QuickBooks, Siemens, and so on. 

Their process starts by identifying the best leads by asking the client’s prospects the right questions and getting the right answer. Then, they qualify the leads by using phone calls to engage with them via natural conversations. Finally, they follow up with every single lead to get the right results. 

Upcall’s pricing plan isn’t displayed on their website, but you can contact them to get further information. 

Four questions you need to ask your target appointment-setting agency before hiring them

Here are five questions you must ask your target appointment-setting agency before you hire them.

1. What is the company’s reputation in the industry?

This remains the logical first question to ask, but many business owners are overwhelmed with the process and, subsequently, forget to ask this. After all, there is no point in having business with a company if they are not credible. Dealing with a reputable company is the key to any successful business. 

Find out if the company has been featured in any publication in recognition of its work. Also, you can check if they are a member of any industry certification or consumer protection agencies such as the Customer Contact Association or Better Business Bureau. When gauging a company’s reputation, you can further ask these three questions.

• How well has the company performed in the past?
• Can you identify and contact any references?
• Do past and current clients recommend the company?

2. How much experience do their employees have?

The appointment-setting industry is competitive and requires the right expertise that has substantial exposure. This enables them to deliver your value proposition within your target industry. 

Besides, they would understand the value of a quality appointment and implement approaches that can help you get it. 

For instance, a good appointment setting service that uses email marketing to fish out qualified leads won’t find anyone’s email address through scrupulous means and claim that they have done the job. Instead, they need to undergo some processes to discover leads that fit your ideal ICP. 

3. Are there any guarantees?

Many appointment-setting services promise a lot to gain potential business, only to under-deliver, and leave their clients with no quality appointments. To avoid this risk, you should look for a company that guarantees your satisfaction or offers a refund. 

This signals that the company has a good track record, and this protects your company from any failed campaign or bill.

4. What reporting do they include in the campaign?

As the campaign progresses, you want to make sure that the company gives you detailed reports of its activities, especially the calls made. 

Having a detailed analysis of these calls helps you to identify and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the implemented strategies. This enables you to adjust where necessary. 

Let Nerdy Joe book appointments for your business

You’ve probably had all the data you need to compare all the services we listed in this post. 

If what you’re looking for is:

• An agency that charges you for results, not tasks.
• An agency that doesn’t require you to commit to a contract.
• An agency that does not waste your time and that’s affordable.
• A group of experts that care about your company’s reputation and relationship with prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the appointment setting service you’re looking for. We will help you generate and have meetings with qualified leads so you can convert them with minimum effort.  

Want to give us a try? We will fill your calendar with 6 meetings with high-quality leads at only $999. Let’s fill your calendar now!